Quo Vadis: A Story of St. Peter in Rome in the Reign of Emperor Nero

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

we have lost long since the feeling of what is worthy or unworthy,—and to me even it seems that in real truth there is no difference between them, though Seneca, Musonius, and Trasca pretend that they see it.

Petronius to Vinicius!

But I do not know to a certainty her name even,—Lygia or Callina? They call her Lygia in the house, for she comes of the Lygian nation; but she has her own barbarian name, Callina.

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Petronius, though older and less athletic, was more beautiful than even Vinicius. The women of Rome admired not only his pliant mind and his taste, which gained for him the title Arbiter elegantiæ, but also his body.

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triclinium.

Dining table with couches on 3 sides!

laconicum.

Room used for hot-air or steam baths.

hamadryad

Nymph

Around about, the Greek language was heard as often as Latin.

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Men with the odor of roast beans, which they carried in their bosoms, and who besides were eternally hoarse and sweating from playing mora on the street-corners and peristyles, did not in his eyes deserve the term “human.”

What is mora? No information on internet!

Petronius had put another question—“But believest thou in the gods, then, Pomponia?” “I believe in God, who is one, just, and all-powerful,” answered the wife of Aulus Plautius.

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Acte had never refused them a service, and that she read the letters of Paul of Tarsus eagerly.

Surprising that she read letters other than Romans.

he was the impersonation of youth and strength, as it were.

Then how did Petronus overpower Vinicius?

Before the face of Nero’s former favorite was drawn aside, as it were, a corner of that veil which hides a world altogether different from that to which she was accustomed.

Acte was the former favorite and the only person who provided Nero with an appropriate cremation after his suicide at age 30.

Increasing chaos rose in her head. Again the door to light began to open and close. But in the moment when it opened, that light so dazzled her that she could see nothing distinctly. She divined, merely, that in that light there was happiness of some kind, happiness beyond measure, in presence of which every other was nothing, to such a degree that if Cæsar, for example, were to set aside Poppæa, and love her, Acte, again, it would be vanity. Suddenly the thought came to her that that Cæsar whom she loved, whom she held involuntarily as a kind of demigod, was as pitiful as any slave, and that palace, with columns of Numidian marble, no better than a heap of stones.

Acte perceiving the profound Christian metaphor of light!

Now, with greater truth than ever, could he exclaim, “Væ misero mihi!”

Woe to me!

She seemed to him a hundred times sweeter, more beautiful, more desired than ever,—a hundred times more the only one, the one chosen from among all mortals and divinities.

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“Therefore she is a Christian,” repeated Chilo. “This signifies,” said Petronius, “that Pomponia and Lygia poison wells, murder children caught on the street, and give themselves up to dissoluteness!

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I asked him, by the way, as a Jew, if Christians and Jews were the same. He answered that the Jews have an eternal religion, but that Christians are a new sect risen recently in Judea; that in the time of Tiberius the Jews crucified a certain man, whose adherents increase daily, and that the Christians consider him as God. They refuse, it seems, to recognize other gods, ours especially. I cannot understand what harm it would do them to recognize these gods.

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But there were moments, too, in which he grew pale from rage, and delighted in thoughts of the humiliation and tortures which he would inflict on Lygia when he found her.

Inappropriate!

He restrained himself with Chilo alone, fearing lest he might cease his searches; the Greek, noting this, began to gain control of him, and grew more and more exacting.

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“Who is there who would not take revenge, father?”

Conversation between Chilo and Ursus about whether it would have been appropriate for a Christian to execute Judas Iscariot if he had not hanged himself.

More than once, however, I think that sooner or later it must end in opening my veins; and knowest thou what the question will be then with me?—that Bronzebeard should not get my goblet, which thou knowest and admirest. Shouldst thou be near at the moment of my death, I will give it to thee; shouldst thou be at a distance, I will break it.

Letter from Petronius to Vinicius which contains elements of foreshadowing.

This is a religion for the rich; hence I do not understand how there are so many poor among its adherents.

Chilo meditating about Christianity!

Vinicius had seen a multitude of temples of most various structure in Asia Minor, in Egypt, and in Rome itself; he had become acquainted with a multitude of religions, most varied in character, and had heard many hymns; but here, for the first time, he saw people calling on a divinity with hymns,—not to carry out a fixed ritual, but calling from the bottom of the heart, with the genuine yearning which children might feel for a father or a mother.

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The old man had no mitre on his head, no garland of oak-leaves on his temples, no palm in his hand, no golden tablet on his breast, he wore no white robe embroidered with stars; in a word, he bore no insignia of the kind worn by priests—Oriental, Egyptian, or Greek—or by Roman flamens. And Vinicius was struck by that same difference again which he felt when listening to the Christian hymns; for that “fisherman,” too, seemed to him, not like some high priest skilled in ceremonial, but as it were a witness, simple, aged, and immensely venerable, who had journeyed from afar to relate a truth which he had seen, which he had touched, which he believed as he believed in existence, and he had come to love this truth precisely because he believed it.

Peter

At the same time he had a feeling that in that madness itself there was something mightier than all philosophies so far. He thought that because of its madness it was impracticable, but because of its impracticability it was divine. In his soul he rejected it; but he felt that he was parting as if from a field full of spikenard, a kind of intoxicating incense; when a man has once breathed of this he must, as in the land of the lotus-eaters, forget all things else ever after, and yearn for it only.

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Vinicius thought of all this through the medium of his love for Lygia; and in the light of those flashes he saw one thing distinctly, that if Lygia was in the cemetery, if she confessed that religion, obeyed and felt it, she never could and never would be his mistress.

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But barely had the sun risen when Mary of Magdala, panting, her hair dishevelled, rushed in with the cry, “They have taken away the Lord!” When they heard this, he and John sprang up and ran toward the sepulchre. But John, being younger, arrived first; he saw the place empty, and dared not enter. Only when there were three at the entrance did he, the person now speaking to them, enter, and find on the stone a shirt with a winding sheet; but the body he found not.

Three?

If he has broken the bones of such a man as Croton, beyond a doubt the soul of Vinicius is puling above that cursed house now, awaiting his burial.

Puling?

But Vinicius, who looked with more indifference than any one at what was passing,

Self contradictory sentence!

Chilo rose, but could not speak. He approached the bed of Vinicius, as if seeking protection in it still; for he had not time yet to think that that man, though he had used his services and was still his accomplice, condemned him, while those against whom he had acted forgave.

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True, he had heard in Ostrianum that one should love even enemies; that, however, he considered as a kind of theory without application in life.

Is that wat I think about forgivdeness?

There was only one answer to all these questions: that they refrained from killing him through a goodness so great that the like of it had not been in the world up to that time, and through an unbounded love of man, which commands to forget one’s self, one’s wrongs, one’s happiness and misfortune, and live for others.

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Tears came to his eyes at the very thought of this, and because of his sorrow and mental struggle; for on the one hand he thought that he would not only have defended the Redeemer, but would have called Lygians to his aid,—splendid fellows,—and on the other, if he had acted thus he would have disobeyed the Redeemer, and hindered the salvation of man. For this reason he could not keep back his tears.

Ursus contemplating

He looked at her profile, at her drooping lashes, at her hands lying on her knees; and in his pagan head the idea began to hatch with difficulty that at the side of naked beauty, confident, and proud of Greek and Roman symmetry, there is another in the world, new, immensely pure, in which a soul has its dwelling.

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Let Him give thee to me and I will love Him, though He seems to me a god of slaves, foreigners, and beggars. Thou sittest near me, and thinkest of Him only. Think of me too, or I shall hate Him.

Vinicius' emotion seems more like immature, albeit overwhelming, infatuation than real love!

Formerly in her prayers she had offered to Christ a heart calm, and really pure as a tear. Now that calmness was disturbed. To the interior of the flower a poisonous insect had come and began to buzz.

Good metaphor!

And he subdued himself to that degree that when Nazarius appeared in the chamber again, he promised him, on returning to his villa, the gift of a pair of peacocks or flamingoes, of which he had a garden full.

When? How long will Vinicius remain sick?

But that religion, according to the understanding of Vinicius, would destroy all order, all supremacy, every distinction. What would happen then to the dominion and lordship of Rome? Could the Romans cease to rule, or could they recognize a whole herd of conquered nations as equal to themselves? That was a thought which could find no place in the head of a patrician. As regarded him personally, that religion was opposed to all his ideas and habits, his whole character and understanding of life. He was simply unable to imagine how he could exist were he to accept it. He feared and admired it; but as to accepting it, his nature shuddered at that. He understood, finally, that nothing save that religion separated him from Lygia; and when he thought of this, he hated it with all the powers of his soul.

Vicinius considers this conflict

And then he wished anew to love Christ. And he understood clearly that he must either love or hate Him; he could not remain indifferent.

Correct!

I have declared it in Judea, in Greece, on the Islands, and in this godless city, where first I resided as a prisoner.

Why omit Asia (Turkey)?

To Crispus that diminutive hunchback seemed then that which he was in reality,—a giant, who was to stir the world to its foundations and gather in lands and nations.

Paul!

Petronius to Vinicius:—“Have

Noteworthy method of advancing the plot

I know not how the Christians order their own lives, but I know that where their religion begins, Roman rule ends, Rome itself ends, our mode of life ends, the distinction between conquered and conqueror, between rich and poor, lord and slave, ends, government ends, Cæsar ends, law and all the order of the world ends; and in place of those appear Christ, with a certain mercy not existent hitherto, and kindness, opposed to human and our Roman instincts.

Contradicted by scripture!

Besides women, the Augustians sat down at the table, among whom Vinicius excelled all with his beauty.

Weak translation - surpassed would be a better word than excelled!

Blessed that roof, if she come under it willingly; blessed the moment, blessed the day, blessed his life. Then the happiness of both will be as inexhaustible as the ocean, as the sun.

Come? Good simile!

Meanwhile came a detachment of Numidian horse, who belonged to the pretorian guard. They wore yellow uniforms, red girdles, and great earrings, which cast a golden gleam on their black faces. The points of their bamboo spears glittered like flames, in the sun.

Should horse be horsemen, horseriders, or cavalry?

While looking thus, his glance rested on the Apostle standing on the stone. For a while those two men looked at each other. It occurred to no one in that brilliant retinue, and to no one in that immense throng, that at that moment two powers of the earth were looking at each other, one of which would vanish quickly as a bloody dream, and the other, dressed in simple garments, would seize in eternal possession the world and the city.

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They saw him as he rose in the chariot repeatedly, and stretched his neck to see if Cæsar was preparing to give him the sign to go his chariot.

Typo - to go to his chariot!

Vincius to Lygia: “The slave Phlegon, by whom I send this letter, is a Christian; hence he will be one of those to receive freedom from thy hands, my dearest.

The entire letter seems more romantic than necessary.

But I know now that I ought to be virtuous, because virtue and love flow from Christ, and because, when death closes my eyes, I shall find life and happiness, I shall find myself and thee. Why not love and accept a religion which both speaks the truth and destroys death? Who would not prefer good to evil? I thought thy religion opposed to happiness; meanwhile Paul has convinced me that not only does it not take away, but that it gives.

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